Our partners MicoBEnet received an award by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation to construct mechanistic metabolic ecosystem models of the bacteria and viruses that survive, colonize and grow on different built environment materials under different environmental conditions. This research program is a 3 years initiative and will be led by Jack Gilbert (University of Chicago), in collaboration with Chris Henry (UChicago), Brent Stephens (Illinois Institute of Technology), Paul Thomas (Northwestern University) and Scott Kelley (San Diego State University). Congratulations! More information about this program can be found at http://microbe.net/2015/03/30